Archives for June 2014

I was at a GAA blitz* all Saturday morning with Daniel. Most of the teams consisted of little boys only but one team was mixed and there was a really great girl on the team. The coach kept shouting out her name “Go on Emily-Jane, up the wing” and so on. Emily-Jane is not a name to conjure with in GAA circles I would have thought, but I was wrong.

Mr Waffle: Where’s Michael?
Me: In bed?
Him: No Daniel’s reading in bed but no sign of Michael.
Me: I saw him go out into the garden earlier, could he still be outside in his pyjamas?

He was indeed. The neighbours had some cousins around for a barbecue and he had stuck his head over the wall to investigate. The daughter of the house invited him to hop over the wall and when Mr. Waffle found him, he was engaging in an enthusiastic game of chasing next door untroubled by his pyjamas and bare feet.

June is always a very busy month with the end of school and GAA and the various outings associated with these.

We have already had the school tour (a day in a bog), the GAA finale, the football blitz at school, the school sports day (Daniel won two medals, hurrah), school end of year reports (all good, thanks for asking), the Church garden party (covered earlier in this blog – we made €200 on the slushie machine), this weekend as well as GAA we had my Sunday afternoon bookclub (your point?), the street party and a midsummer drinks party at a friend’s house. Next weekend we will be at a housewarming and a fortieth birthday party (whoever thought we would see 40 again?).

The children finish school on Thursday. Although sixth class graduated today (really, sixth class? When I was a child, you had to get a degree before you could graduate – insert harrumphing noise here). A very good friend of the Princess’s graduated and a couple of them went to the cinema after school. Crucially, without parental supervision. Great excitement. In addition, I am taking parental leave over the summer and hope to finish work on Friday until September. Fancy!

I think we are ready for the holidays. Also the weather is fantastic. I understand that that is all due to change by the end of the week. Alas.

Me: Where does all my money go?
My sister: Sympathetic noise.
Me: I mean, I get my hair cut once a year (it grows slowly – has always only needed an annual cut, really).
Her: Sympathetic noise.
Me: I don’t buy make up or perfume (these are supplied by my sister who is an adventurous purchaser and gives me spares). I hardly ever buy clothes. I get my books from the library now. Where does it go?
Her: I think you will find that effective savers don’t eat lunch out every day.

I have long harboured an ambition to go to the Hill of Tara. We went in the teeth of the children’s opposition. The Rough Guide described it as resembling nothing so much as a golf course. That is true. “Hill” is generous. It bucketed rain and we all got soaked to the skin.

Notwithstanding all of this, there is something a little bit magical about the place.

My friend M’s father died recently. They thought he would make 100 but he didn’t; he had a long and happy life and died at home surrounded by his family. He was very well until the last year of his life, in fact, he only finally gave up driving at 95 and shooting at 92 (some relief in relation to the latter, I think).

M’s father was born in 1915 and his own father was an old man when he was born, having been born in 1845. When M’s father was young, he remembered his father telling him about people calling to the door of the farmhouse in Tipperary, starving in the wake of the Famine. It seems extraordinary that someone with such a close link to the Famine should only have died earlier this month, I suppose he must be the last person to have had a parent who survived the Great Famine.